


lose something every day

by Damkianna



Category: Sinbad (TV)
Genre: 5 Things, Episode Related, F/F, Girls Kissing, Theft, episode tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-19
Updated: 2014-10-19
Packaged: 2018-02-21 17:23:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2476256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Damkianna/pseuds/Damkianna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five things Rina stole from Nala, and one thing Nala gave her. Episode tags for 1.01-1.06, kind of accidentally.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lose something every day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Muccamukk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muccamukk/gifts).



> I only ever watched Sinbad at all because I went through letters for this exchange last year, saw your section on it, and wondered just what this awesome-sounding show was that I'd never heard of. I wasn't quick enough to write anything for you then, but when I saw you'd requested it again this year I knew I had to give it another shot. I didn't entirely intend for this to form a perfect sequence of episode tags, but that's how it turned out; technically, this is canon-compliant, but in my head 1.07 happens differently after this. (In my head, 1.07 always happens differently.) Apologies for the gratuitous Star Trek reference—I wrote it down as a joke and then couldn't quite talk myself into removing it.
> 
> Title is from [One Art](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/176996) by Elizabeth Bishop, because I see shades of Rina in it and I'm incomparably awful at titling things.

  


* * *

  


**one:** an earring.

  


* * *

  


Nala doesn't realize that it's missing right away.

The storm filled the _Providence_ with water, flooded Nala's cabin—she sleeps on deck where it's dry, that night, and in the morning she opens her door and a rush of cold seawater washes over her feet. The ship had been tossed about by the waves, and the water inside had been pulled about in currents and eddies by that thing, that monster, making and unmaking itself, charging toward Father—

Nala cleans up carefully. Her linens, her silks, her cushions will all go up on deck to dry; she piles them up by the door and then picks through the rest of the flotsam. She untangles bracelets, untwists necklaces, collects all the paint-pots for her face and mouth and eyes that are still sealed as they should be and lines them up. Only two remain afterward that lost their wax—both held kohl, broad black streaks painted across the cabin floor pointing to where the empty pots have ended up. Nala gets some of it on her hands when she retrieves them.

The earrings are the hardest. They are lighter than her bracelets or necklaces, mostly, and so they were easier for the water to carry; they've crept into all the little corners of the cabin, behind and underneath everywhere there is a behind or underneath to go. She finds one pair nearly on opposite sides of the room. When she comes up with one delicately twisted ivory loop but doesn't see the other nearby, she doesn't worry. Her cabin door is nearly flush with the deck—there is a space beneath it, but the space isn't wide enough for an earring this size to wash away through.

So she works her way through every nook and cranny of her cabin, lays out all the ones she's found and counts them; and in the end only one earring is missing. Only _one_.

Nala gazes down at the earrings and feels her mouth go thin, feels herself turn chilly and contemptuous—it's comforting, almost. Anchoring. It could be any one of them, she thinks, and then huffs a sharp breath out through her nose. No, not just any; not the cook, a gainfully employed man—or at least he was, before the storm. The ship's doctor was on the crew, too, and seems far too haplessly polite to steal, besides. The northman is a trader with valuable property of his own, no need for him to take Nala's. That boy Sinbad is a wretch and an idiot, has stolen from Nala once already—but he's still tired, sick, recovering from his wound and from the exertion of half-drowning himself in the hold to save—

To save that girl, that ragged unkempt stowaway girl. Nala lifts her chin, picks up the lone earring, and sweeps out of her cabin.

  


*

  


The ragged unkempt stowaway girl is on deck, crouched on the ship's rail like a wild cat with one pale bare leg dangling over the side. It makes Nala angry just to look at her—to see her sitting there so easily, so comfortably, when everyone around her has lost so much; when they're drifting out here in the middle of the ocean, with no idea where to go or what to do next.

" _You_ ," Nala snaps, striding up to her.

The girl turns to face Nala, looking startled, and then her eyes narrow.

"I know you took it—"

"Took _what_?" the girl spits, crossing her arms defensively, jutting her chin up, every line of her body insisting that Nala's the one who's being rude.

"Do not lie!" Nala says. "I know that it was you."

The ship's doctor has been sitting on the deck, nervously squeezed into the gap between two water-barrels—he was looking out across the sea, his attention somewhere far away, but the noise has drawn his gaze. He stands, wobbling a little; he doesn't have his sea legs yet. Nala struggled with her balance, too, at first, but that was months ago—Father had sailed many times before, had teased her—

"What?" the ship's doctor says. "Sorry, are you both—what's the matter?"

Nala holds out the lone earring. "Someone stole the other," she says to him, and then rounds on the girl. "And I _know_ it was you."

"Prove it," the girl says, sharp, not flinching.

"Prove that you _didn't_ ," Nala demands, but even as she says it she knows it won't work. She cannot prove the girl took her earring, the girl could have hidden it anywhere; and the girl cannot prove otherwise, when she could show Nala fifty hiding places on the ship that are earringless and all the while have hidden it in the fifty-first.

The girl laughs, mouth twisting mockingly, and Nala wants to— _slap_ her, to shove her over the rail and let her _swim_ back to Basra.

The ship's doctor looks between the two of them uncertainly. "Look, maybe it just got lost," he offers. "With the storm and everything—maybe it got washed away somewhere you haven't looked."

Nala closes her hand into a fist around the earring and glares at the girl.

The girl shrugs. "Sounds reasonable enough, doesn't it?" she murmurs, light; but her gaze on Nala's face is sharp, fiercely amused, unkind.

"You are a liar and a thief," Nala says softly, and lets her tone say what she thinks of the girl for it. "I won't forget it."

She turns away before the girl or the doctor can say anything else. Her fist is still clenched tight around the remaining earring; it leaves a round rippling mark in the palm of her hand that takes half the afternoon to fade away entirely.

  


* * *

  


**two:** a necklace.

  


* * *

  


After they escape from Razia and her people, they are all so glad to be alive that they almost forget they're strangers who don't like each other. They clutch each other dazedly and laugh while the roc—the _roc_ —blows them out to sea, and when the coast of Razia's land is a thin hazy line on the horizon, the wind picks up again. The roc screeches and wheels over them and then soars away, a great dark shape against the sunset; and Nala stares up at its sweeping silhouette and wonders how many more impossible things she will see before she leaves this ship.

At least one more, she supposes, if the impossible thing she herself runs from should catch up to her.

They hardly have any more food on the ship than they had in the cages of the Water Thieves, but that night they don't care. They tell Cook what happened in breathless bursts, breaking off now and then to laugh from sheer amazement, and for the first time they are—they are _kind_ to one another, clumsy but deliberate. No one mentions the look Gunnar wore when they tried to make him fight, the quiet grim sadness in his face beneath the awful parody of cosmetics he had been smeared with; no one mocks Anwar's helpless hopefulness in the cages. They tell Cook about it like Anwar was right, like they really did believe in each other, and when they tell it that way it sounds good, better—not like something true, Nala thinks, but like something that could be.

  


*

  


Shared gratitude to still be breathing probably isn't a defining moment in any of the tales Anwar knows, but it makes a difference. When Nala strides up on deck, crosses her arms, and glares at Rina, she only half means it. She looks at Rina these days and thinks of her missing earring, of Rina's brass-bold lies—and then of Rina clinging to Anwar's shoulders like a monkey climbing a giraffe, yanking determinedly on his ears, boxing him about the head while he stumbled around and yelped. In the moment, it had felt mad and frightening, like they all might turn on each other; but they hadn't, and the rosy glow of that happy ending shines backward through all Nala's memories. Thinking of it now makes her want to laugh.

Rina slants a glance sideways at Nala, eyes narrowed. "What is it now?" she says.

Nala huffs out an exasperated breath. "As if you don't know. Where is it?"

Rina rolls her eyes. "I don't know— _what_ is it?"

"My necklace," Nala says. "The woven gold with the blue and green stones. I cannot find it—and if you tell me I must have lost it, I'll throw you overboard," she adds, pointing a threatening finger at Rina; but she can't convince herself she means it, and by the look on Rina's face, she hasn't convinced Rina either.

"Oh, really," Rina says, crossing her arms. "You and what army?"

It's Nala's turn to roll her eyes. "We're on a ship; you can't even sell it for anything! Just give it back, Rina."

"I can't give back what I didn't take," Rina says—which isn't precisely a direct denial, Nala notices.

Nala still doesn't _like_ Rina, and perhaps never will. For all that her fight with Anwar has become funny in the end, it happened in the first place because she turned on them, as soon as the Water Thieves made it clear she could benefit by it. Nala hasn't forgotten that.

But they'll be on this ship together for at least a little while longer. Anwar might have been wrong to imagine they will all be friends; but if nothing else, the Water Thieves have taught them that out here in the middle of the ocean, on this ship, where food cannot be bought and wind cannot be bartered—out here, they have nothing except each other. If Rina sometimes wishes to take things, well, perhaps Nala can afford to let them be taken.

But perhaps Rina can afford to listen to a lecture about it, too.

"And you _can_ give back what you did take," Nala observes—but levelly, dryly.

Rina eyes her. "And what would I get out of that?" she says, her tone suggesting that she is playing along with this odd little thought exercise of Nala's only because there is nothing else to do.

Nala shrugs one shoulder. "Peace," she says. "Quiet. A generous measure of goodwill."

Rina's face says what she thinks of that answer. "And you made your necklace sound so fine!" She flaps a hand, dismissive. "Can't be worth much if that's all it will buy me."

Nala sighs and flicks a braid over her shoulder; she's surprised to find herself sounding more exasperated than she feels, making a show of it so—so Rina will grin, maybe, look smug and pleased for a moment instead of tired and hungry.

Nala doesn't earn a grin, but Rina's mouth does quirk. "Come back when you have some bread," she adds, "and then we'll talk."

Nala tosses her head and goes back belowdecks; but there's not the same feeling of sour anger in her belly as there was the first time, no lingering resentment.

  


*

  


A day later, they sail through the flotsam left by a wreck, recent enough that it hasn't even had time to drift away to a coastline. Gunnar ropes a pair of crates, Sinbad diving into the water to retrieve a third that's bobbing even lower; the bread in them is either hard or soggy, half the fruit dried and the other half bloated with seawater, but picking through it all for the edible portions feels like surveying a feast. They laugh with relief, bellies rumbling, and sort through it together, eating as they go—and halfway through the first crate, Nala passes Rina a piece of barely-stale bread instead of eating it herself, eyebrows raised.

Rina doesn't say anything, only raises her eyebrows back and takes it; but the next morning Nala wakes and rolls over, and a familiar loop of woven gold studded with blue and green stones is coiled on top of the sea-chest by her head.

Nala sits up and reaches out, runs her fingers over the necklace, and finds herself smiling.

  


* * *

  


**three:** an anklet.

  


* * *

  


They all sit quietly and listen to Sinbad's story; he stops once when the sword is at Jamil's throat, again when his grandmother curses him, but they all know where the story ends, and nobody speaks until Sinbad describes his mad dash onto the _Providence_ and then stumbles to a halt.

"Well," Nala says. "I suppose it's a good thing we haven't managed to find a friendly harbor, or we might have killed you without even meaning to."

"I would've said something!" Anwar protests.

"I didn't think you believed in curses," Sinbad says. Reciting the tale of his brother's death and his own flight from Basra made him turn quiet and grave—now a hint of a smile flickers back into life around his mouth.

Anwar crosses his arms. "Well, I'm a _doctor_ , not a magician," he says. "But given that your necklace started tightening _by itself_ around your throat—I wouldn't have just stood there and let you die."

Nala can see Sinbad's throat move as he swallows. "And you wouldn't—you don't want to—" 

The look on his face says that question doesn't end happily, but Gunnar doesn't let him get that far. "I know that I, at least, could not rightly hold what you have told us against you," he says, low, and his face is strange for a moment, tense and still, like he is carved out of stone.

"I can't either," Rina says much more lightly, with a little shrug. She's still dressed in the gambler's wife's clothes, silk pinned to her hair and paint on her face, a visible reminder that Sinbad isn't the only one of them who's made some foolish decisions.

Nala snorts at the understatement. "Not after what you did," she agrees, and puts a gentle hand to Sinbad's shoulder.

Rina doesn't reply.

  


* * *

  


When Nala can't find her butterfly hairpin, she almost goes looking for Rina, reflexive—and then she remembers: Sinbad's the one who lost her that. Rina wasn't—

Rina wasn't even there. Unless maybe she'd been watching from somewhere off to the side, Nala supposes. Nala can't remember seeing her, not until after Sinbad had won them the right to join the games upstairs; but then she hadn't looked much like herself at the time.

  


*

  


Nala's gold-and-amber beaded anklet, however, never came with them into the House of Games; so when _that_ goes missing, Nala's fairly certain she knows who to blame. She hasn't seen much of Rina since they left the edge of the desert—but it's only been a few days. Rina has ignored Nala for far longer than that before.

Nala shoves her cabin door open and strides across the lower deck. Her head is full of all the things she will say as she climbs the stair to the upper deck—and then she sees Rina, and it all empties out again.

Nala is used to finding Rina sitting on the rails, bare legs swinging, or perched on a barrel or crate—or even atop one of the masts, which she has mastered the trick of shimmying up with a little help from the sail-ropes. But when Nala comes on deck, Rina is not in any of those places.

She is seated on the deck, folded up in a corner near the bow, knees bent almost defensively—as far away as she can get from Gunnar, Nala thinks, who sits in the stern at the tiller most days. Nala can't imagine why: Gunnar is fond of Rina, has surely already forgiven her thoroughly for everything that happened at the House of Games.

Nala looks over her shoulder for Gunnar and finds him looking back, a frown furrowing his brow. He glances deliberately at Rina and then back at Nala, and makes a small encouraging nod toward the bow. He thinks there's something wrong with Rina, too—and he's not trying to tell Nala to go yell at her.

Nala crosses the deck slowly. The low simmer of irritation that usually accompanies nearly every conversation she has with Rina is gone; without it, Nala feels calm and clear-eyed, what had been roiling exasperation now a still lake.

The anklet is on Rina's left ankle. She didn't take it to keep it, or she would have hidden it and claimed innocence; she didn't take it to sell it, not when she has a pile of that gambler's wife's jewels and silks still holed away somewhere. But why else, Nala thinks, except—

Except, perhaps, because she knew Nala would come to her looking for it.

Rina can't fail to notice Nala's approach—not Rina, of all people—but she doesn't look up until Nala comes to a stop beside her. When she tilts her head back, her gaze is cool, her expression flat.

Nala sits, tucking her feet underneath herself, and doesn't look away from Rina.

"Something you need?" Rina says.

"Yes, I think so," Nala says slowly. "Are you—"

She can't figure out how to finish the question. Rina raises an eyebrow. "If you have something to say, say it."

Her tone is mocking, conversational; but the words, Nala thinks, the words are defensive. Rina is bracing herself for something, bracing and provoking at the same time—taking the anklet and wearing it in plain view, acting like she doesn't know why Nala's come up on deck to find her. Like she thinks a blow will come whatever she does, and has decided she might as well meet it face-on.

Except that, for once, Nala doesn't want to strike her. Why is Rina expecting her to?

An answer comes to Nala, then, and maybe it isn't the right answer, but maybe it is. Nala hasn't seen much of Rina since they left the edge of the desert—since they left the House of Games, since Rina admitted she'd done something wrong and Nala agreed with her aloud and then never said anything else to her about it. 

"Well?" Rina says, pushing.

Nala looks at her carefully. "Seeing you like that—pretending not to know us, lying to our faces—made me angry. We needed help and you didn't care." She pauses, trying to figure out the right way to say it. "It means something," she says at last, "that you left us behind; and I won't pretend that it doesn't."

Rina doesn't flinch. She leans back against the barrel behind her, looks at Nala with remote eyes; every part of her face, of the thoroughly relaxed line of her arms and shoulders, says loudly how little she cares about what means or doesn't mean something to Nala.

But Rina, Nala remembers, is a liar.

"I know, I know," Rina says, dismissive, "you won't forget it."

"I won't," Nala agrees. "I also won't forget that you came back."

Rina goes still and wide-eyed, face blank and startled; and then her expression turns disdainful, quick as a blink, and she tosses her head. "As if anybody asked what you think," she says—still belligerent, but not so sharp-edged.

"Mm," Nala murmurs, and reaches out, fingertips to Rina's ankle. "Can I have this back now?"

It's odd to see her hand there, to find that she can nearly encircle Rina's ankle entirely. Rina takes up so much space, strikes sparks off everything she touches, never apologizes—and in that, at least, they're the same. She hasn't ever seemed small to Nala; she still doesn't now, not really, not even with her ankle narrow under Nala's fingers.

"I suppose you might as well," Rina says, bland. "Too flashy for my taste," and she lifts her chin and lets Nala undo the anklet's tie.

Nala slides it free and then, suddenly decisive, ties it around one of her own ankles. The beads are warm against her skin, from—from touching Rina, she thinks, and feels something in her chest flip over unsteadily. She knots it carefully, not looking up until she's finished; when she does, Rina is watching her with one eyebrow raised and her mouth quirked to one side.

"You could have just asked, you know," Nala says.

Rina scoffs. "It's no fun if you just _give_ things to me."

Deliberately misunderstanding her, Nala thinks, watching Rina's face; but maybe it's all right to let her get away with it. This time. Nala crosses her arms and huffs exasperatedly, extra loud. "Stealing other people's property is _fun_ for you?"

"Well, you wouldn't know," Rina says, "you've never had fun in your life," and then something else that's probably insulting; but Nala misses it, too busy watching Rina grin.

  


* * *

  


**four:** six bangles.

  


* * *

  


Rina shrieks with joy when it starts to rain, squinting up into the drops and laughing; and Nala spreads her hands out, feels the water run down her cheeks and her neck and her wrists, and breathes— _breathes_. There is sun slanting across her face from low in the east, rain from overhead, a breeze picking up, the _Providence_ solid beneath her feet; it is like all of life at once has come to find her, to dance in celebration now that she has turned Death away. All the mourning rites Nala was ever taught are supposed to end like this: in reverence to everything that is. She never said them for Father, but this feeling—this feeling, and that she is here to feel it—is a better ode to him than any words Nala could ever say.

Nala closes her eyes and listens to Rina laugh, and thinks she has never felt more alive.

  


*

  


She removes her earrings, plucks the jewels from her face and washes away the paste left behind, and then sinks to her bunk in delighted exhaustion. She is still decked in wedding red, chains of gold a reassuring weight across her chest—nothing like the barely-there brush of butterfly wings. She closes her eyes and breathes, and lets herself slide away.

The scrape of her cabin door opening is what wakes her, and she blinks blearily and hears, " _Damn_ —"

"Rina?" she murmurs.

There's a sigh. "Yes,"—grudgingly, and then more gently: "Go back to sleep, it's all right."

But Nala—Nala has slept enough, has fled enough, has too often done what other people think she should. She struggles up out of the warm lingering grip of sleep; it's easier to escape than the ocean, she thinks, no need for Sinbad to come and haul her free this time. "No," she manages, "no, wait, what is it?" and sits up, rubbing her eyes—her fingers come away red and gold and sparkling, and she looks down at them and smiles.

"Oh, nothing," Rina says, "nothing, I was just—well—all right, look—"

The _Providence_ tilts a little, riding a small swell now that the wind has come back, and Rina _jingles_ ; Nala blinks and looks from Rina's face to Rina's hands. Six bangles are looped around one of her wrists, and she's clutching at them belatedly with the other hand, scowling. Thieves probably pride themselves on managing _not_ to jingle, Nala thinks.

"Those are mine," Nala observes.

"Yes," Rina says— _admits_ , immediately.

Nala stares at her.

Rina shrugs one shoulder, belatedly casual, but Nala thinks she can see a flush working its way up Rina's cheeks. " _Yes_ , they're yours," she repeats. "I didn't—I only took one, the first time, but you didn't—"

 _Notice_ , she doesn't say, but Nala hears it. And can imagine it easily: Rina can be quiet, can keep still so as not to be seen, but that isn't the same thing as being trapped. Without the wind, they'd been trapped; Rina would have hated it even without the maggots appearing out of nowhere, the creeping scarcity of food and water, Cook's life hanging in the balance. Stealing successfully, arguing with Nala, would have been at least a distraction from it all—but Nala had been too wrapped up in her own troubles, in Anicetus and and in the terrible sinking feeling that everything she'd been running from had finally caught up to her. So Rina had stolen another bangle; and then another—

"I am sorry," Nala says, and realizes how ridiculous it is in the same moment Rina raises her eyebrows. They both start to laugh, and Nala covers her face with her hands but can't stop grinning. On a day when Nala had thought she would not see the sunrise, laughing feels _so good_.

"No, it was—" Rina says, and then stops and shakes her head. She's looking down at the bangles, running her fingers over them. "It was good that you didn't come to take them back before you—left."

She's gotten quieter, and doesn't glance up; the flush has gone away, leaving her pale and serious-looking.

"We figured out that you'd gone, and where, and I thought—I told myself there was no way Gunnar and Sinbad wouldn't get you back. There was no way you'd just go away and let me keep these without yelling at me even once."

Rina's fingers have tightened around the bangles, knuckles going white. Nala reaches out and puts her hand over Rina's, half-expecting Rina to pull away or scowl at her, maybe say something mocking; but Rina doesn't do any of those things. She looks up at last, silently, eyes wide and dark in her small pale face, and lets Nala hold on to her.

"And you were right," Nala says, warm. "You are a wretch and a thief and you had better give those back."

Rina rolls her eyes; but still, still, she doesn't yank her hands away, and something in the line of her shoulders, her mouth, has relaxed. "Yes, all right," she says, and beneath Nala's hand her fingers move—

"No," Nala says. "Let me."

Rina looks at her narrowly but gives in, and Nala takes her wrist and wraps a hand around the bangles—three of them, the three nearest Rina's hand.

"You had better give those back," she repeats, "sometime," and she draws the three bangles away, sliding them over her own hand with one little hitch at the knuckles.

She lets go of Rina after, doesn't reach for the other three, and Rina watches her for a long moment with a wary little quirk to her mouth, trying to work out what the trick is—but there is no trick, and Nala has to bite down on a laugh at the thought of how that will confound her.

"I was on the ship," Nala says, settling back against the wall behind her bunk, drawing her feet up. "I don't know what it was like—did you see it vanish? Tell me what it looked like from the outside."

Rina stays where she is, gaze flicking over Nala's face assessingly; and then she steps nearer, perches on the corner of Nala's bunk like—like a little bird, quick and bright-eyed. "It was like dye running," she says, "it just—smeared away," and she gestures. The bangles on her wrist jingle, and Nala smiles.

  


*

  


Rina keeps the bangles for three days. Nala comes back to her cabin in the evening, feeling her way through the dark and yawning, and steps squarely on the ridge of them, stacked up in a pile on her floor—she wakes up Anwar with her startled curse. Up on deck behind her somewhere, Rina starts to laugh. Nala shouts up to her that even Gunnar will not be able to save her from Nala's vengeance in the morning; but she can't keep the corners of her mouth from twitching, even as she hobbles the rest of the way to her bunk.

  


* * *

  


**five:** a hairpin.

  


* * *

  


Sinbad doesn't tell them everything that happened to him and Gunnar; Nala can tell that by the way his gaze jumps to Gunnar and then away, the pauses he leaves between sentences, the vagueness with which he describes the strange men who kidnapped Gunnar. And Gunnar doesn't tell him to stop. Gunnar looks down at the deck with his fists on his thighs and says nothing, and that is why they all know better than to ask. Maybe in a few days, when whatever it is isn't so near to Gunnar—but not now.

Anwar makes up the lack by telling Sinbad and Gunnar absolutely everything: what he said to Taryn, what Taryn said to him, how he tried to keep them safe, how much he wishes he'd kept silent—

"Yes, not too good at that, are you," Rina murmurs.

—and how Taryn needed something of Sinbad's.

"We didn't tell her where you keep your things," Nala says, before Anwar can say anything else. "But she found some strands of your hair."

It isn't a lie, except that it is: the way she says it, it sounds like the hair had been left on Sinbad's pillow, tangled in one of his shirt-sleeves. Anwar turns to blink at her owlishly, uncertain—but Sinbad laughs, albeit a little unsteadily.

"You're going to use this against me, aren't you?" he says.

Nala crosses her arms. "You could stand to be cleaner," she agrees. "I've been saying it for weeks."

The conversation turns to that thing Taryn built out of sand, the hunter—Sinbad doesn't ask any more questions about the hair. Nala doesn't exactly intend to look at Rina, but that's where her gaze ends up; and Rina is looking back at her with narrowed eyes, intent and curious.

Nala looks away. Rina can tell Sinbad whatever she wants to tell him, obviously. It just—didn't seem right that she should have to, that it should be dragged out into the light like that if she didn't want it to be. That's all.

  


* * *

  


Nala doesn't— _avoid_ Rina. That would be foolish and pointless, and impossible besides. Nala is precisely ordinary, does everything exactly the way she usually would. She doesn't ask, doesn't pry, doesn't demand an explanation. Rina ought to appreciate her forbearance.

But if Rina does, she hides it well: it's not even two days before Rina comes to find her.

Nala is lying on the foredeck in the shade of the sail, eyes closed and legs crossed at the ankles, when she feels a tug on her hair. She is wearing a hairpin, lacquered, in the shape of a flower; her braids had been twisted around it, held in place, and she feels them begin to slide sideways beneath the weight of her head and sighs. "Give it back, Rina."

"All you were doing with it was lying on it," Rina says, and Nala cracks an eye open in time to see Rina's slender quick hand twirl the hairpin sharply once before she draws it back out of Nala's line of sight.

"That's really not the point, you know," Nala says; but she lifts her head up and slides her hands beneath it, drapes her braids out over the deck behind her before relaxing back again.

"What," Rina says, "no jokes about how I'm going to be stealing your hair next?"

Nala feels her gut clench for a moment. She says nothing.

"I know you want to ask," Rina says. "It's not very hard to tell with you—not about some things."

Nala doesn't move, doesn't even open her mouth. What does Rina know about anything, anyway?

"I didn't take his hair to take his hair," Rina says, sounding faintly exasperated.

Nala blinks up at the sky. "What?"

"I mean, I didn't _mind_ ," Rina admits; Nala tilts her head back far enough to see the way Rina shrugs sheepishly. "When we first got on the ship, he was—he was nice to me; and then it turned out he was a thief and a street-boy; and then he saved my life. I thought maybe—I don't know. I thought it could have happened, and I would have liked it well enough. But I didn't take his hair to take his hair," she repeats. "I took that lock because it had a bead in it."

Nala squints at her dubiously. "With me on the ship, and Gunnar's silks in the hold somewhere, you wanted—a bead."

Rina doesn't say anything for a long moment. Nala doesn't look away, though it's harder to guess what her expression means when Nala is seeing it upside-down; she looks—thoughtful, maybe? Perhaps it matters more that her gaze is directed out to sea instead of at Nala, that she's gone still the way she does when she is trying not to be seen.

"Cook is missing the lid off one of his spice jars," Rina says at last, so quietly Nala almost doesn't hear it.

A more than usually ungraceful way to try to change the subject, Nala thinks. "Is he?" she says, instead of pointing it out, because—

Because maybe she doesn't want to hear why exactly Rina wanted something of Sinbad's so badly. Nala closes her eyes and tilts her face away, and tells herself it doesn't matter.

Sometimes Nala is as much a liar as Rina, in her own way.

"And Anwar," Rina adds. "Anwar has lost one of those little glass inkpots he uses."

Nala opens her eyes again and stares up at the sky.

"Gunnar has a box of brass buckles, you know. Like for belts, or bandoliers, or armor straps. He doesn't touch it, not that I've seen, so probably he doesn't know yet that one of them is gone."

Nala rolls over, pushing herself up with her elbows. She wants to see Rina's face when she asks this, even if all she gets is that closed-off blankness—it would be fair enough, after all, when Rina has just given her so many other answers. "Why?"

Rina spins Nala's hairpin around in her fingers again and meets Nala's gaze, tilting her chin up defensively; even when she wants to explain herself, Nala thinks, even when she is trying, she still can't bring all the walls down at once. "People walk away," she says. "Things can be kept."

"That hairpin had better not be one of them," Nala replies after a moment, dry and curious at once— _will_ Rina try to keep it? Is that why she's telling Nala all this?

But Rina laughs and leans forward, reaching out to tuck the hairpin behind Nala's ear. "I don't need it," she says, and then she must see something in Nala's face; her hands go still against Nala's hair, her eyes warm and intent, and she looks at Nala carefully and adds, "Don't you remember?"

Nala looks back at her blankly, trying to think through the list of things Rina has taken from her, everything that has ever not been where it should have—and then, abruptly, does remember. Nala has gotten everything back from Rina, every time, except once: she never had managed to convince Rina to give her back that ivory earring.

"Then?" she says. "But you hated me then—"

"Very much," Rina agrees, and draws her hands back without really moving away, still leaning near when she laughs again and shakes her head. "I took yours, yours and Gunnar's, very early—I thought Cook and Anwar might stay with the _Providence_ , because they had always intended to be part of its crew, and Sinbad didn't seem to know what he meant to do. But the two of you could have left if you wanted, you with all your treasures and Gunnar with his trader's wares. You weren't like anyone I'd ever seen before, and I wanted—I wanted to remember. I wanted something I could have even after you were gone, just to show myself that it happened."

Nala thinks that may be the most words she's ever heard out of Rina in a row. "And now?" she says— _wanted_ , Rina has kept saying, _I wanted_ , but not what it is she wants now.

"Now that I know you all?" Rina leans back again and shrugs, dismissive; but her eyes still look like she wants to laugh. "Now I suppose I have some things I can sell if I need to."

Nala huffs out a breath through her nose and swats at Rina's knee, scolding, with the backs of her fingers. "I would like to see you try to sell an earring that cannot be paired," she says.

"It could be made into a pendant," Rina argues, and then dodges a second swat by springing to her feet. "I don't need to put up with this, you know," she adds, nose in the air, and darts over Nala and past her, so close her wrist nearly hits Nala's ear.

"Maybe if you weren't so—" Nala stops halfway through shouting after her. Her wrist near Nala's ear—Nala grabs for the hairpin, but, sure enough, she finds nothing but air. " _Rina_!"

  


* * *

  


and **one**.

  


* * *

  


Even Cook likes Rina's gulyásleves, though he usually has very strong words for all cooking that is not his own. When he says so, Rina beams at him, and he touches her shoulder and takes her empty bowl and turns away—he doesn't see how quickly the smile drops off her face again, but Nala does.

It startles her to see it. Everything has worked out, after all. Rina and Anwar saved Sinbad and fetched him back to the ship, and the siren is dead. Sinbad has looked a little too grave since, ate his helping of the stew quickly and silently—but he seems thoughtful, not upset, and it only took Gunnar going to sit with him in the bow to get him to start talking. Nala glances up the deck at them: they are still sitting there, Sinbad speaking low, Gunnar listening with the quiet careful attention he always pays to Sinbad. Neither one of them is smiling, but they look placid, easy, their shoulders relaxed. That isn't the problem. And Anwar—

Nala scoops up another spoonful of gulyásleves, and shifts her weight a little, angles herself sideways enough to let her see Anwar's face as he watches Rina stand up and move away. His enormous antelope eyes fix worriedly on Rina's back, but he doesn't reach for her or say anything; he watches her go and looks vaguely miserable, fiddling with his spoon so absently that he drips gulyásleves on his fingers.

Nala waits until Rina has gone below and then slides over toward the tiller. Anwar meets her gaze and then looks across the deck at the hatch where Rina disappeared from view.

"What happened?" Nala says.

"Just what we told you—we fed the siren a really bad memory," Anwar says, glancing down at his hands uncertainly and then making a face when he sees the stew on the left one. "Or—well. Rina told her a story, anyway."

"A true story," Nala says, because it must have been—mustn't it? The siren ate memories, not lies. Or at least that's how Sinbad had explained it.

"I thought it was," Anwar admits. "I thought—I don't know. I suppose I hope it wasn't, really." Nala isn't sure what her face does when she hears that, but whatever it is, it makes Anwar add hastily, "If it was true, then it's Rina's, I don't think I should—"

"No," Nala agrees. "But—can you tell me anything about it? Anything at all?"

Anwar wavers. "It was about—being left, I suppose," he says after a moment. "Being left by people who shouldn't have left you."

 _People walk away_ , Nala remembers, and feels suddenly unsettled. She sets down her bowl. Cook was right, the gulyásleves is good, but Nala isn't hungry anymore.

  


* * *

  


Nala almost decides to let it go—would, even, if it weren't so obviously still bothering Rina so much. As it is, she is odd with Anwar, blithe and harsh by turns, as if she can't decide which will better convince him to keep quiet about whatever it is she told the siren; he doesn't need convincing, but Rina can't see that, can't believe it, not when she feels herself to be vulnerable the way she so obviously does.

So Nala can't let it go. They are following Sinbad's grandmother's voice back to Basra, back to Akbari and Taryn—they need to have their heads on straight. They cannot afford to have Anwar tense and silent, Rina spiteful. And—

And Nala does not like to see Rina so unhappy. It sounds so foolish when she thinks it to herself, so petty compared to everything waiting for them in Basra, but it's true. The idea that what Rina did to the siren has hurt Rina somehow feels like a stone in Nala's chest. She can't let it go.

  


*

  


Nala finds Rina belowdecks, sitting on a stool beside Cook while he works on their supper. Rina and Cook both look up inquiringly when they hear her footsteps; Rina immediately rolls her eyes, sighing a breath out through her nose, but Cook—Cook looks at Nala with an assessing gaze and then smiles at her, just a little.

"This needs pepper!" he announces, clapping his hands together. "But the jar is empty—I will need to go refill it." He points a finger at Nala and his expression turns admonishing. "Do not let her stick her grubby fingers in the sauce while I am gone," he adds, tilting his head toward Rina.

"Oh, come on, how long can pepper take you?" Rina says.

Cook turns and fixes her with a sharp look. "There are many different kinds of pepper," he says gravely. "I will need to think about which kind I want to bring back up with me. It could take several minutes."

"Traitor," Rina murmurs.

Cook beams at her and then sweeps away toward the hold, humming.

After he goes, there is silence. Rina looks at Nala and then pointedly away, crossing her arms. "Just spit it out," she snaps.

"Anwar told me which one of you killed the siren," Nala says.

Rina raises an eyebrow, face a perfect mask of disdain. "Oh, please—what, you mean you'd thought _Anwar_ tricked her?"

Tricked—such a careful choice of words, Nala thinks. "You told her a story," Nala says, with equal care. "If it—if it had been a true story, it would have been very brave of you to tell it."

Rina's expression twists unpleasantly. "Well, it _wasn't_."

"Then it was very clever of you to tell it," Nala says evenly.

"Congratulations to me," Rina spits. Her legs are relaxed, akimbo, propped easily against the legs of the stool; but she can't keep the tension out of her arms or hands, her knuckles white where they're tucked against her elbows. "Now will you just go away?"

"Rina—"

"I would _pay_ you to leave me alone!" Rina cries, throwing up her hands.

Nala doesn't want to get angry, doesn't mean to, but she can feel her face go still, hear how her tone ices over. It's always so easy for Rina to get under her skin. "You don't have enough money for that. And even if you did, it wouldn't work."

Rina sneers at her. "Oh, come on," she says—startlingly, terribly bitter. "Everybody has a price. Don't try to tell me you're any different."

"Of course I am not," Nala says after a moment. "Death almost bought me with my father's life. You know that."

Rina huffs and shakes her head. "That's not the kind of price I meant," she says. Now she just sounds irritated; but it's not enough to drown out the echo of all that pained resentment. Whatever is wrong with her, Nala stumbled near the heart of it for a moment.

"Why not?" Nala says, pushing. "I would have sold myself for it. Price is not about money—it is about value."

Rina looks at her silently, expression swept clean, and then draws in a slow breath. "Yes," she says quietly. "Yes, I suppose it is." She shakes her head again, more slowly, looking away, and then darts a piercing glance at Nala. "You—you let go of your father, you don't care about money. What is it you value, then?"

Nala gives herself away in the silence, without intending it: she feels herself hesitate, feels an answer she would be foolish to say nevertheless rising up in her throat, and she looks at Rina too intently for too long, and then must tear her gaze away too obviously after. And Rina—Rina, who depends so much on knowing where other people hide things, on learning what they don't tell her before they can fail to tell it to her—Rina sees it.

"Oh, _donkey shit_ ," Rina hisses, "don't you dare tell me—"

Nala meets her gaze and doesn't flinch; a funny sort of calm has come over her now that Rina has found her out, now that there is nothing to be done about it except be truthful. "You asked," she says gently. "There is more than one answer—but that is a true one."

"It's a _stupid_ one! It's _ridiculous_. You can't expect me to believe that. You don't even know what you're talking about—"

And that—that, Nala cannot let pass. Rina may disbelieve her, may tell her she's being a fool; but to think that Nala doesn't know what she's saying, that she doesn't understand what it means—

"I do know," Nala interrupts, and takes a careful step nearer to Rina. "I know that you are rude, and a thief, and a liar. I know that you take what does not belong to you and do not like to give it back. I know that you leave without even a goodbye if you think you will be better off; I know that you sometimes come back anyway. I know that you are very clever—and I know that you are very brave."

She says this last very low; and Rina must understand what she means by it, because Rina closes her eyes and turns her face away. Nala reaches out and touches Rina's chin—her hands feel so hot, her heart pounding unsteadily, but her fingers don't shake and she's grateful for it.

And Rina—Rina doesn't move away. She doesn't move at all. She sits there with her arms tucked up tight, perched on Cook's stool, eyes closed, and lets Nala touch her face; and Nala doesn't want to frighten her or hurt her, but she so badly wants Rina to _believe_.

She kisses Rina first upon the cheek, gently, and when Rina still doesn't move away she does it again, longer, letting her lips rest lingeringly against Rina's skin—it's warm, Nala is warm, and the air seems very close and very still. _They_ are very close: Nala is between Rina's knees, her elbow caught between them so she can reach Rina's face, her wrist nearly touching Rina's throat. Rina still hasn't moved, but Nala shifts back a little to make sure that she is not unhappy and sees the flush that has climbed her face, the pink warmth rising in her freckled cheeks.

"Is that the best you can do?" Rina murmurs.

Nala jerks her gaze away from Rina's cheekbone to find that Rina has opened her eyes and is looking at Nala, dark and careful and assessing.

Nala smiles. "How much better will you allow me to get?"

Rina uncrosses her arms and lifts them, rests her forearms casually across Nala's shoulders, and all the while does not look away. "Let's find out," she says.

  


*

  


They kiss for longer than it could ever take Cook to refill his pepper jar, even if he grew and plucked and ground the pepper himself in the hold; they kiss until their faces are sweating from standing so near Cook's stove for so long, until the flush has spread to Rina's shoulders and elbows, until Rina lets her studiously casual air go enough to wind her hands into Nala's braids. It's not long after before Rina breaks away, sliding her arms between them and turning her face away to look at the wall.

Nala almost steps back—but Rina doesn't look angry, hasn't pushed Nala's hands away from where they've come to rest on Rina's knees.

"I still don't believe you," Rina says quietly. "You shouldn't think that I—you are still an idiot."

Nala smiles, and feels the smile turn wry; she isn't angry, and cannot find it in herself to be disappointed. Rina is still Rina—would Nala want her otherwise? Frustrating and sweet by turns, stubborn, endlessly wary: but this is what Nala has learned to value, this is what she cannot let go of. And it suits them in its own way, she thinks, to argue with each other even over this.

"And you are still wrong," Nala says with mock sternness, raising an eyebrow.

Rina looks at her intently for a moment, searchingly, and then huffs and glances away again. "You _are_ an idiot," she repeats, shoving at Nala lightly with her knees; and then, looking as though she doesn't entirely mean to, blurts, "But maybe—"

"What?" Nala says, when Rina doesn't seem inclined to continue.

Rina is silent; and then grins suddenly, very bright. "Maybe I'll let you convince me," she says, flicking Nala a wicked little glance; and then all at once she's up, off the stool, out of Nala's reach. "That must be a very rare sort of pepper indeed," she says—to Cook, who has just come up to the doorway with a broad smile on his face; and then she darts around him and is gone.

"Only the best!" Cook shouts after her, grinning, and then turns to face Nala and raises an eyebrow. "Didn't you have two bracelets on when you came in here?"

Nala glances down at her arm, startled, and touches the one that's left; and then she covers her face with her hands and laughs.

  



End file.
